Collected Poetical Works of Mary Robinson

by Mary Robinson

  “Let such as are affected by these circumstances of alarm, hardship, and danger, recollect, that the subject of them was A WOMAN! of the most tender and delicate frame; of the gentlest manners; habituated to all the soft elegancies and refined enjoyments that attend high birth and fortune; and far advanced in a state in which the tender cares, always due to the sex, become indispensably necessary.

  Her mind, alone, was formed for such trials.”

  The most argumentative theorists cannot pretend to estimate mental by corporeal powers. If strength or weakness are not allowed to orginate in the faculty of thought, Charles Fox, or William Pitt, labouring under the debilitating ravages of a fever, is a weaker animal than the thrice-essenced poppinjay, who mounts his feathered helmet, when he should be learning his Greek alphabet. If strength of body is to take the lead of strength of mind, the pugilist is greater than the most experienced patriot; the uncultivated plough-boy surpasses the man of letters; and the felicity of kingdoms would be as safe in the hands of a savage Patagonian ruler, as under the stronger faculties of the most accomplished Statesman. By this rule, monarchs should select their cabinets by the standard of measurement; and while the first minister could say with Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, “I am as tall a man as any in Illyria,” he may laugh to scorn the most gigantic talents.

  This question does not admit of argument; it is self-evident. And yet, though it be readily allowed that the primary requisites for the ruling powers of man, are strong mental faculties; woman is to be denied the exercise of that intuitive privilege, and to remain inactive, as though she were the least enlightened of rational and thinking beings. What first established, and then ratified this oppressive, this inhuman law? The tyranny of man; who saw the necessity of subjugating a being, whose natural gifts were equal, if not superior to his own. Let these mental despots recollect, that education cannot unsex a woman; that tenderness of soul, and a love of social intercourse, will still be her’s; even though she become a rational friend, and an intellectual companion. She will not, by education, be less tenacious of an husband’s honour; though she may be rendered more capable of defending her own.

  A man would be greatly shocked, as well as offended, were he told that his son was an idiot; and yet he would care but little, if every action proved that his wife were one. Tell a modern husband that his son has a strong understanding, and he will feel gratified. Say that his wife has a masculine mind, and he will feel the information as rather humbling than pleasing to his self-love. There are but three classes of women desirable associates in the eyes of men: handsome women; licentious women; and good sort of women. The first for his vanity; the second for his amusement; and the last for the arrangement of his domestic drudgery. A thinking woman does not entertain him; a learned woman does not flatter his self-love, by confessing inferiority; and a woman of real genius, eclipses him by her brilliancy.

  Not many centuries past, the use of books was wholly unknown to the commonality of females; and scarcely any but superior nuns, then denominated “learned women” could either read or write. Wives were then considered as household idols, created for the labour of domestic life, and born to yield obedience. To brew, to bake, and to spin, were then deemed indispensably necessary qualifications: but to think, to acquire knowledge, or to interfere either in theological or political opinions, would have been the very climax of presumption! Hence arose the evils of bigotry and religious imposition. The reign of credulity, respecting supernatural warnings and appearances, was then in its full vigour. The idle tales of ghosts and goblins, and the no less degrading and inhuman persecutions of age and infirmity, under the idea of witchcraft, were not only countenanced, but daily put in practice. We do not read in history of any act of cruelty practiced towards a male bewitcher; though we have authentic records to prove, that many a weak and defenceless woman has been tortured, and even murdered by a people professing Christianity, merely because a pampered priest, or a superstitious idiot, sanctioned such oppression. The witcheries of mankind will ever be tolerated, though the frenzy of fanaticism and the blindness of bigotry sink into oblivion.

  In or about the year 1759, were published some excellent lines, from the pen of a British woman, addressed to Mr. Pope, whose cynical asperity towards the enlightened sex was not one of his least imperfections. I shall only give an extract:

  “In education all the difference lies, WOMEN, if taught, would be as brave, as wise, As haughty man, improv’d by arts and rules; Where GOD makes one, neglect makes twenty fools, Can women, left to weaker women’s care, Misled by CUSTOM, Folly’s fruitful heir, Told that their charms a monarch may enslave, That beauty, like the gods, can kill and save; And taught the wily and mysterious arts, By ambush’d dress, to catch unwary hearts; If wealthy born, taught to lisp French, and dance, Their morals left, Lucretius like, to chance; Strangers to Reason and Reflection made; Left to their passions, and by them betray’d; Untaught the noble end of glorious Truth, Bred to deceive, e’en from their earliest youth; Unus’d to books, nor Virtue taught to prize, Whose mind, a savage waste, all desart lies; Can these, with aught but trifles, fill the void, Still idly busy, to no end employ’d:

  Can these, from such a school, with virtue glow,

  Or tempting vice, treat like a dang’rous foe?

  Can these resist when soothing Pleasure woos,

  Preserve their virtue, when their fame they lose?

  Can these, on other themes, converse or write,

  Than what they hear all day, and dream all night?

  Not so the Roman female fame was spread,

  Not so was CLELIA or LUCRETIA bred!

  Not so such heroines true glory sought,

  Not so was PORTIA or CORNELIA taught.

  PORTIA, the glory of the female race; PORTIA, more lovely in her mind than face; Early inform’d by Truth’s unerring beam, What to reject, what justly to esteem.

  Taught by Philosophy, all moral good; How to repel, in youth, th’impetuous blood:

  How ev’ry daring passion to subdue; And Fame, through Reason’s avenues, pursue, Of Cato born; to noble Brutus join’d; Supreme in beauty, with a ROMAN MIND!”

  The women, the Sévignés, the Daciers, the Rolands, and the Genlis’s of France, were the first, of modern times, to shake off the yoke of sexual tyranny. The widow of Scarron, (afterwards Madame de Maintenon,) was an ornament to her sex, till she became the dupe of a profligate monarch, and the instrument of bigot persecution. The freezing restraint which custom placed on the manners of other nations, and which is as far removed from true delicacy as the earth is from the heavens, in France, threw no chilling impediment on the progress of intellect. Men soon found by experience, that society was embellished, conversation enlivened, and emulation excited, by an intercourse of ideas. The younger branches of male nobility in France, were given to the care of female preceptors; and the rising generations of women, by habit, were considered as the rational associates of man. Both reason and society benefited by the change; for though the monasteries had less living victims, though monks had fewer proselytes, the republic of letters had more ornaments of genius and imagination.

  Women soon became the idols of a polished people. They were admitted into the councils of statesmen, the cabinets of princes. The influence they obtained contributed greatly towards that urbanity of manners which marked the reign of Louis the Sixteenth. The tyrants of France, at the toilettes of enlightened WOMEN, were taught to shudder at the horrors of a Bastille: which was never more crowded with victims, than when bigotry and priestcraft were in their most exulting zenith. I will not attempt to philosophize how far the influence of reason actuated on more recent events. That hypothesis can only be defined by posterity.

  It is an indisputable fact that a woman, (excepting in some cases of supposed witchcraft) if thrown into the water, has, as Falstaffe says, ‘a strange alacrity at sinking.’ And yet a woman must not be taught to swim; it is not feminine! though it is perfectly masculine to let a woman drown merely because
she is a woman, and denied the knowledge of preserving her existence. In this art the savages of Oreehoua and Tahoora are initiated from their infancy; the females of those islands are early taught the necessary faculty of self-defence. They are familiarized to the limpid element at so early a period that a child of four years old, dropped into the sea, not only betrays no symptoms of fear, but seems to enjoy its situation. The women consider swimming as one of their favourite diversions; in which they amuse themselves when the impetuosity of the dreadful surf that breaks upon their coast, is encreased to its utmost fury, in a manner equally perilous and extraordinary. And yet these courageous females are denominated of the weaker sex.

  A celebrated geographer remarks, that “the best test of civilization, is the respect that is shewn to women.”

  The little regard shewn to the talents of women in this country, strongly characterizes the manners of the people. The Areopagites, once put a boy to death for putting out the eyes of a bird: and they argued thus, says an elegant writer, il ne s’agit point lá d’une condamnation pour crime, mais d’un jugement de moeurs, dans une republique fondée sur les moeurs.

  Heaven forbid that the criterion of this national and necessary good, should be drawn from the conduct of mankind towards British women. There is no country, at this epocha, on the habitable globe, which can produce so many exalted and illustrious women (I mean mentally) as England. And yet we see many of them living in obscurity; known only by their writings; neither at the tables of women of rank; nor in the studies of men of genius; we hear of no national honours, no public marks of popular applause, no rank, no title, no liberal and splendid recompense bestowed on British literary women! They must fly to foreign countries for celebrity, where talents are admitted to be of no SEX, where genius, whether it be concealed beneath the form of a Grecian Venus, or that of a Parnese Hercules, is still honoured as GENIUS, one of the best and noblest gifts of THE CREATOR.

  Here, the arts and the sciences have exhibited their accomplished female votaries. We have seen the graces of poetry, painting, and sculpture, rising to unperishable fame from the pen, the pencil, and the chissel of our women. History has lent her classic lore to adorn the annals of female literature; while the manners of the age have been refined and polished by the wit, and fancy of dramatic writers. I remember hearing a man of education, an orator, a legislator, and a superficial admirer of the persecuted sex, declare, that “the greatest plague which society could meet with, was a literary woman!”

  I agree that, according to the long established rule of custom, domestic occupations, such as household management, the education of children, the exercise of rational affection, should devolve on woman. But let the partner of her cares consider her zeal as the effect of reason, temporizing sensibility, and prompting the exertions of mutual interest; not as the constrained obsequiousness of inferior organization. Let man confess that a wife, (I do not mean an idiot), is a thinking and a discriminating helpmate; not a bondswoman, whom custom subjects to his power, and subdues to his convenience. A wife is bound, by the laws of nature and religion, to participate in all the various vicissitudes of fortune, which her husband may, through life, be compelled to experience. She is to combat all the storms of an adverse destiny; to share the sorrows of adversity, imprisonment, sickness, and disgrace. She is obliged to labour for their mutual support, to watch in the chamber of contagious disease; to endure patiently, the peevish inquietude of a weary spirit; to bear, with tacit resignation, reproach, neglect, and scorn; or, by resisting, to be stigmatized as a violator of domestic peace, an enemy to decorum, an undutiful wife, and an unworthy member of society. Hapless woman! Why is she condemned to bear this load of persecution, this Herculean mental toil, this labour of Syssiphus; this more than Ixion’s sufferings, as fabled by heathen mythologists? Because she is of the weaker sex!

  Tradition tells us that the Laura of Petrarch, whose name was immortalized by the Genius of her lover during twenty years of unabating fondness, could neither read nor write! Petrarch was a poet and a scholar; I will not so far stigmatize his memory, as to attribute his excessive idolatry to the intellectual obscurity of his idol. Yet from the conduct of some learned modern philosophers, (in every thing but love), the spirit of cynical observation might trace something like jealousy and envy, or a dread of rivalry in mental acquirements. We have seen living husbands, as well as lovers, who will agree with the author of some whimsical stanzas, printed in the year 1739, of which I remember the following lines, “Now all philosophers agree, That WOMEN should not LEARNED be :

  For fear that, as they wiser grow, More than their husbands they should know.

  For if we look we soon shall find, Women are of a tyrant kind; They love to govern and controul, Their bodies lodge a mighty soul!

  The sex, like horses, could they tell Their equal strength, would soon rebel; They would usurp and ne’er submit, To bear the yoke, and champ the bit.”

  Constrained obedience is the poison of domestic joy: hence we may date the disgust and hatred which too frequently embitter the scenes of wedded life. And I should not be surprized, if the present system of mental subordination continues to gain strength, if, in a few years, European husbands were to imitate those beyond the Ganges. There, wives are to be purchased like slaves, and every man has as many as he pleases. The husbands and even fathers are so far from being jealous, that they frequently offer their wives and daughters to foreigners.

  However contradictory it may seem, to contracted minds, I firmly believe that the strongest spell which can be placed upon the human affections, is a consciousness of freedom. Let the husband assume the complacency of the friend, and he will, if his wife be not naturally depraved, possess not only her faith but her affection. There is a resisting nerve in the heart of both man and woman, which repels compulsion. Constraint and attachment, are incompatible: the mind of woman is not more softened by sensibility than sustained by pride; and every violation of moral propriety, every instance of domestic infidelity, every divorce which puts asunder ‘those whom God has joined,’ is a proof of that maxim being a false, I may say a ludicrous one, which declares that MAN was born to command, and WOMAN to obey! excepting in proportion as the intellectual power devolves on the husband.

  If a woman receives an insult, she has no tribunal of honour to which she can appeal; and by which she would be sanctioned in punishing her enemy. What in man, is laudable; in woman is deemed reprehensible, if not preposterous. What in man is noble daring, in woman is considered as the most vindictive persecution. Supposing a woman is calumniated, robbed at a gaming table, falsely accused of mean or dishonourable actions, if she appeals to a stranger; “it is no business of his! such things happen every day! the world has nothing to do with the quarrels of individuals!” If she involves a dear friend, or a relation in her defence; she is “a dangerous person; a promoter of mischief; a revengeful fury.” She has therefore no remedy but that of exposing the infamy of her enemy; (for sexual prejudices will not allow her to fight him honourably), even then, all that she asserts, however disgraceful to her opponent, is placed to the account of womanish revenge. The dastardly offender triumphs with impunity, because he is the noble creature man, and she a defenceless, persecuted woman.

  Prejudice (or policy) has endeavoured, and indeed too successfully, to cast an odium on what is called a masculine woman; or, to explain the meaning of the word, a woman of enlightened understanding. Such a being is too formidable in the circle of society to be endured, much less sanctioned. Man is a despot by nature; he can bear no equal, he dreads the power of woman; because he

  knows that already half the felicities of life depend on her; and that if she be permitted to demand an equal share in the regulations of social order, she will become omnipotent.

  I again recur to the prominent subject of my letter, viz. that woman is denied the first privilege of nature, the power of SELF-DEFENCE. There are lords of the creation, who would not hesitate to rob a credulous woman of fortune, hap
piness, and reputation, yet they would deem themselves justified in punishing a petty thief, who took from them a watch or a pocket handkerchief. Man is not to be deprived of his property; he is not to be pilfered of the most trifling article, which custom has told him is necessary to his ideas of luxury. But WOMAN is to be robbed of that peace of mind which depended on the purity of her character; she is to be duped out of all the proud consolations of independence; defrauded

  of her repose, wounded in the sensibilities of her heart; and, because she is of the weaker sex, she is to bear her injuries with fortitude.

  If a man is stopped on the highway, he may shoot the depredator: and he will receive the thanks of society. If a WOMAN were to act upon the same principle, respecting the more atrocious robber who has deprived her of all that rendered life desirable, she would be punished as a murderer. Because the highwayman only takes that which the traveller can afford to lose, and the loss of which he will scarcely feel; and the WOMAN is rendered a complete bankrupt of all that rendered life supportable. The swindler and the cheat are shut out from society; but the avowed libertine, the very worst of defrauders, is tolerated and countenanced by our most fastidious British females. This is one of the causes why the manners of the age are so unblushingly licentious: men will be profligate, as long as women uphold them in the practice of seduction.

  If, in the common affairs of life, a man be guilty of perjury, on conviction he is sentenced to undergo the penalty of his crime, even though the motive for committing it, were unimportant to the community at large, and only acting against the plea of individual interest. But if a man takes an oath, knowing and premeditatedly resolved to break it, at the altar of the Divinity, his crime is tolerated, and he pleads the force of example, in extenuation of his apostacy. Man swears to love and to cherish his wife, never to forsake her in sickness, or in health, in poverty or wealth, and to keep to her alone so long as they both shall live. Let me ask these law makers, and these law breakers, these sacriligious oath takers, whether nine out of ten, are not conscious of committing perjury at the moment when they make a vow so universally broken?